NYT: Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons

[kristopher]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/science/18tier.html

Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: May 17, 2010

Long before “sustainable” became a buzzword, intellectuals wondered how long industrial society could survive. In “The Idea of Decline in Western History,” after surveying predictions from the mid-19th century until today, the historian Arthur Herman identifies two consistently dominant schools of thought.

The first school despairs because it foresees inevitable ruin. The second school is hopeful — but only because these intellectuals foresee ruin, too, and can hardly wait for the decadent modern world to be replaced by one more to their liking. Every now and then, someone comes along to note that society has failed to collapse and might go on prospering, but the notion is promptly dismissed in academia as happy talk from a simpleton. Predicting that the world will not end is also pretty good insurance against a prolonged stay on the best-seller list. Have you read Julian Simon’s “The State of Humanity”? Indur Goklany’s “The Improving State of the World”? Gregg Easterbrook’s “Sonic Boom”?

Good books all, and so is the newest addition to this slender canon, “The Rational Optimist,” by Matt Ridley. It does much more than debunk the doomsaying. Dr. Ridley provides a grand unified theory of history from the Stone Age to the better age awaiting us in 2100.

It’s an audacious task, but he has the intellectual breadth for it. A trained zoologist and former editor at The Economist, Dr. Ridley has established himself in previous books, like “The Origins of Virtue” and “Genome,” as the supreme synthesist of lessons from anthropology, psychology, molecular genetics, economics and game theory. This time he takes on all of human history, starting with our mysteriously successful debut. What made Homo sapiens so special? Dr. Ridley argues that it wasn’t our big brain, because Neanderthals had a big brain, too. Nor was it our willingness to help one another, because apes and other social animals also had an instinct for reciprocity.

“At some point,” Dr. Ridley writes...

I don't know how good it is, but I thought of you when I read the article. It seems worth the read if I can find the time.

[Donnachaidh]

1. the better age is *always* a hundred years dowm the road.

That wondrous *carrot on a stick* to keep people moving forward.

When I was a kid we were told we'd have personal jetpacks, flying cars, and people would be living on the Moon....

:shrug:

[Nederland]

10. Very true

A better age is always 100 years down the road. It is extremely hard to pick two dates that are 100 years apart and say that things were better in the earlier one than the later one. I suppose you could argue that 1842 was better than 1942 simply due to WWII, but examples like that are the exception rather than the rule. They tend to be confined to very short time periods involving war or disease. The relentless march of technology has made life better pretty consistently for millenia. In fact, the one period of time where it is almost universally recognized that society got "worse" is the fall of the Roman Empire, which resulted in a decline in knowledge and technology. Even that example has skeptics, who argue that in addition to coming from a rather Eurocentric viewpoint, it also reflects a bias toward the rich and wealthy. Did the fall of the Roman Empire really change life for the average person? Does it really matter much if you are a slave owned by a Roman instead of a Visigoth?

The absolute proof that things are getting better, however, comes from observing people's choices. I see very few that are willing to give up the advances of technology and decide to grow their own food, have no electricity, refuse modern medicine, etc. Sure there are some that do this, but they are far fewer than those who bitch about how modern life sucks.

[SheilaT]

2. Yeah. It's surprising to me how often people

express the conviction that doom in some form is just around the corner. There are so many predictions of Things As We Know Them coming to an end that I've largely lost patience with such proclamations. Not only have I been around long enough to have gone through all sorts of doomsday predictions, but I also read a lot of science fiction. That will tend to cure one of the idea of imminent doom and catastrophe.

[joshcryer]

9. I'm no a doomer. I think our future is "bright." But it will be at a very great cost.

Hundreds of millions of people are going to be affected negatively by climate change. Hundreds of millions.

And we simply are not doing anything about it. This attitude of "progress through commerce" is a lie, as those at the bottom of the social ladder will always be screwed. Always. It is a right wing talking point, a right wing position, to think that progress as business as usual, is a good thing. It's not.

[Terry in Austin]

12. Doom is not necessarily gloomy

It depends on how you feel about the particular things that are getting doomed.

Arguably, many of the Things as We Know Them that are coming to an end will not be missed by caring, humane people.

Science fiction? Well, I'm a fan, too, but we have to keep in mind that it's a narrative projection into a future setting of those issues that are dogging us in the present day.

I don't believe that we will literally colonize the stars any more than I believe that Jehovah created planet Earth in seven days; however, both are strong narratives that tell us a lot about who we are and what our concerns are.

[hatrack]

3. "Good books all" includes Simon and Easterbrook? Why not cite Lomborg, too?

Oh, and here's a guy from The Economist . . . .

[joshcryer]

8. Denialists, all.

[NNadir]

4. Find the time?

How long can it possibly take to cut and paste without grasping a single idea conveyed in a text?

[Speck Tater]

5. The human race is fatally flawed and doomed to extinction.

In the LONG RUN I know I will be proven right. It make take a million years, but the human race WILL go extinct, either by just collapsing completely, or, possibly more likely, by being replaced by a successor species like intelligent machines. Either way, the days of human dominance are numbered.

[TheWraith]

21. And, conveniently, no one will be able to prove that you're completely wrong.

Lucky for you!

[The Croquist]

25. All species are fatally flawed

Most likely human beings will evolve into a new species but I'd bet that the newer, improveder species will be announced by scientists hundreds of thousands of years before it could be justified scientifically. The public will love being told that they are special and superior to their ancestors.

[thekimchikiller]

26. maybe a merger

Not necessarily replaced by intelligent machines, we may end up merging with intelligent machines.

[pscot]

6. The future's so bright

I have to wear shades.

[joshcryer]

7. RW bullshit.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Ridley was the chairman of Northern Rock, the first British bank to collapse in the crisis

due to a "high-risk, reckless business strategy" (that's the conclusion of the Treasury committee that looked into the collapse).

Northern Rock was, in many ways, the start of the whole international crisis. This is not the first review of Ridley's new book that has completely missed the fact that he was one of the most irresponsible, stupid financiers who had a significant role in the current disaster. Luckily, George Monbiot did point it out:

On 16 August 2007, Ridley rang an agent of the detested state to explore the possibility of a bailout. The self-seeking fleas agreed to his request, and in September the government opened a support facility for the floundering bank. The taxpayer eventually bailed out Northern Rock to the tune of £27bn.

When news of the crisis leaked, it caused the first run on a bank in this country since 1878. The parasitic state had to intervene a second time: the run was halted only when the government guaranteed the depositors' money. Eventually, the government was obliged to nationalise the bank. Investors, knowing that their money would now be safe, as it was protected by the state, began to return.

While the crisis was made possible by a "substantial failure of regulation", MPs identified the directors of Northern Rock as "the principal authors of the difficulties that the company has faced". They singled Ridley out for having failed "to provide against the risks that (Northern Rock) was taking and to act as an effective restraining force on the strategy of the executive members".

This, you might think, must have been a salutary experience. You would be wrong. Last week, Ridley published a new book titled The Rational Optimist. He uses it as a platform to attack governments that, among other crimes, "bail out big corporations". He lambasts intervention and state regulation, insisting that markets deliver the greatest possible benefits to society when left to their own devices. Has there ever been a clearer case of the triumph of faith over experience?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/31/state-market-nothern-rock-ridley

Monbiot goes on to point out bad errors in the Ridley book (hey, hatrack correctly identified above that Lomborg comes into this - Ridley worships the ground on which he walks), and Ridley has tried to defend himself, poorly. Followup Monbiot comlumn here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/18/matt-ridley-rational-optimist-errors

[joshcryer]

14. Epic bump, thanks.

[Dead_Parrot]

16. Yeah, Ridley's ability to predict the future...

...or indeed recognise reality is worth precisely dick.

[Odin2005]

17. Matt Ridley is a FINANCIER!?! HOLY SHIT, I didn't know that!

I have most of his books! :wow:

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. 'hereditary financier'

The Honourable Matthew White Ridley, 49, has long revelled in his role at the heart of North East public life, and cemented it by chairing Northern, one of the region's few FTSE 100 companies and a major employer.

But despite his connections the scientist and journalist is perhaps the weakest link on Northern's board, which is stuffed with experienced financiers who should have seen the warning signs sooner.

Tall, fiercely intellectual and sometimes stand-offish, Ridley is a DPhil in zoology and wrote his Oxford University doctorate on the mating habits of pheasants. His father, the fourth Viscount Ridley, was also chairman of Northern from 1987 to 1992, and sat on the board for 30 years.

The chairman's job now pays £300,000 a year and it is safe to say that the present incumbent has never needed one of its home loans. He lives in Blagdon Hall, the Grade I listed family seat near Newcastle which dates back to 1735.

Ridley was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford, and became science editor and later American editor at the Economist before writing a science column for the Daily Telegraph. He joined the board at Northern Rock in 1994 and was appointed chairman in 2004.
...
One of his ancestors was the city's mayor four times in the 18th century and his uncle was the late Nicholas Ridley, the former Conservative cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/markets/article.html?in_article_id=424434&in_page_id=3

[Odin2005]

19. Wow, and an aristocrat, too!

:wow:

[TheWraith]

22. Hope for the future is right wing bullshit?

Thanks for dismissing yourself as a crank and one of those perpetually wrong doomsayers.

[joshcryer]

23. This is not hope for a brighter future, this is denial of the impact we're currently causing.

The very fucking idea that markets are going to magically usher in clean technology in time to stem catastrophic climate change is so preposterous as to make me vomit. :vomit:

[depakid]

11. John Tierney?

:rofl:

I saw this libetarian moran on a round table discussion once, babbling on and on incoherently as the other guests looked around at each other as if to say WTF is this guy talking about and "should I be embarrassed for this person?"

[RainDog]

15. interesting. I wonder if the author addresses Jared Diamond's history, Collapse?

because Diamond provides concrete examples of societies that did, in fact, collapse because of ecological disasters.

when I see the mess in the gulf, I find it hard to envision either a way this will all end well or a dead gulf - the first b/c I don't want to be overly optimistic - and we haven't faced this level of catastrophe before and the second because I do not want this to happen for the sake of all living things on this planet.

In either case, tho, the way humans are degrading their own food supply, not to mention that of other species (and not to mention our symbiotic lives) is a problem in a population so large - as is the issue of gm seeds, pesticides and waste created by deregulated industry.

you can be hopeful and yet still realize that we have problems we must address. it's only with hope that you try to address the problems.

[Blue Meany]

20. Anyone trying to develop an over-arching theory covering

all of history is going to produce a flawed work, because no one can synthesise that much information. These authors are no exception, nor is Diamond. There is,however,a lot of hisorical research that supports the notion that environmental over-reach is a major cause of societal collapse. It may not be the only one, and one cannot predict with certainty that we are facing that. However, given our dependence on non-renewable resources and the very real limits to all resources on this planet, even if our sociey hangs together it is likely to feel a lot like a collapse to those who cannot voluntariy wean themselves from wasteful lifestles. The economy on Wall-Street, being a totally socially constructed one used for siphoning of wealth from the productve sectors can perhaps last forever, but the real economy cannot continue to grow much longer, especially without massive new energy sources that will be needed to obtain and/or recycle the raw materials needed to produce things.

[joshcryer]

24. Diamond would agree with this RW BS.

[Codeine]

27. Not Diamond's most successful work.

There's a fair amount of picking and choosing of facts and massaging of details in that book. GG&S is much, much better.